As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
The use of access controllers in information handling systems has increased in recent years. Broadly speaking, an access controller may be thought of any device, system, or apparatus configured to permit an administrator or other person to remotely monitor and/or remotely manage an information handling system, oftentimes via an “out-of-band” management communications channel physically isolated from the “in band” communication channel used for non-management communications. An access controller may include or be an integral part of a baseboard management controller, a Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC) or an Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC).
Thus, an access controller may in essence be a special-purpose information handling system embedded in a larger general-purpose information handling system. As such, an access controller may also be configured to execute an operating system to facilitate its remote management functionality. Like many information handling systems, an access controller may include a specialized program of executable instructions known as a bootloader configured to initialize hardware for use with an operating system and load the operating system for execution.
From time to time, events may occur that cause corruption of bootloader or operating system code in an access controller, thus negatively affecting usability of an access controller. In some cases, a corruption may render an access controller completely unusable for its intended purpose of remote management, thus leading to poor user experience.
In addition, bootloaders and operating systems are becoming increasingly interdependent (e.g., bootloaders and operating systems may pass numerous variables and parameters to each other), thus meaning that it has become increasingly important that an operating system residing on an access controller remain in sync with a compatible version of an associated bootloader stored on the access controller. Also, in some cases, it is critical that when updated, a bootloader only be replaced with the same or newer version of the bootloader.